


la dolce vita

by ansonwish



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Denial of Feelings, Dysfunctional Relationships, Enemies to Friends, Introspection, Jealousy, M/M, but tyler’s catching feelings for a guy who has no feelings, officially they're not a couple in this, they’re the same characters as they were before and therefore they’re terrible humans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-02 08:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14540673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ansonwish/pseuds/ansonwish
Summary: Fandango wasn't what Tyler would ever consider a realthing.Fandango was, in words that Tyler understood better, a bravely patterned jacket he saw while window shopping. He could have it, no questions asked, but he would most likely only wear it a few times before the charm wore off or he ran out of tasteful ways to wear it again.Even the prettiest things stop being enjoyable at some point.





	la dolce vita

**Author's Note:**

> Set shortly after the May 12th, 2016 episode of Smackdown when Fandango and Tyler joined up after dropping the Golden Truth. Sort of a headcanon about them having an incredibly rocky start with each other and eventually becoming a semi-functional team. This is literally just nonsense I started writing on fly that I was actually proud of.

Tyler has always been good at keeping up appearances, no matter what happened in his life.

That's a given, considering how demanding a lifestyle he leads, juggling his modelling career with his wrestling work and everything both of those jobs entail. He micromanages his phone’s calendar more than he does his photo gallery, and is constantly setting alarms to keep his day to day life organized.

There is no part of Tyler Breeze that is haphazard. It simply doesn't work that way. He keeps day planners, and he definitely doesn't trust assistants to manage with precision and tact. There's order to be maintained. The last time he let an assistant get her fingers on his planner, she failed to balance his time between a late workout, his nighttime skincare routine and the adequate amount of sleep he needed every night. Which meant he had to forgo an hour of deserved beauty sleep in order to get both done. He has never skipped his routine before, he wasn't starting now. 

Despite a tantrum so massive that it could have registered on the Richter scale, he found a shred of humanity left in him that kept him from throwing her out on the curb at 1:30 at night. 

If he isn't settling that scrutinizing eye on his schedule, he’s setting it on himself. Every surface in your home should be reflective enough to be used as a mirror, his mother told him, and so his various residences shine up like fine china and so does he. His mother still looked just as beautiful as she had almost forty years ago, and Tyler followed every routine she passed onto him — he obviously knew she was doing something right. Never a hair out of place, never a blemish or, god forbid, a dry patch on his skin. He practically glowed as he moved with grace and precision not seen before on a man of his stature. 

And then that stupid ballroom dancer had to go and screw it all up.

Tyler doesn't care all that much about investing himself emotionally in anyone for any reason. But this stupid ballroom dancer really was just that — stupid. He was, for lack of a nicer term, a ditz in glitter pants and ridiculously optimistic prints that nobody else but him could make work.

Working against him was easy. It was easy to seize him by the hair and kick him over and over, and knock his lights out with a Beauty Shot carried with the same finesse he had on a runway. 

Working with him was the harder part. Tyler was a forward thinker. He knew he was going to knock Truth on his ass before the bell even rang. Pathetic worm didn't deserve to be yucking it up with someone who was so top tier in every category. He didn't see it coming when Fandango blindsided that golden freak so Tyler could get the pin. Fandango clearly saw something Tyler hadn't yet. 

Mother once told Tyler when he was young about peacocks and how they used beautiful plumage to get attention from someone they had interest in. If people could do that, Fandango would have been in technicolor bloom as he smirked at Tyler across the ring. 

Not that Tyler wasn't totally doing it too as he posed backstage during Fandango’s interview, but it wasn't so desperate. It was simply paying back the favour, of course. Tyler shined brighter than Fandango any day of the week, and he wasn't even the one drenched in glitter. Mother called Tyler that night with a cadence that worried him a great deal, and though she never actually said it, he could tell she wanted to rub it in his face that she knew that fine young dancer liked him.

Fandango wasn't what Tyler would ever consider a real _thing._ Fandango was, in words that Tyler understood better, a bravely patterned jacket he saw while window shopping. He could have it, no questions asked, but he would most likely only wear it a few times before the charm wore off or he ran out of tasteful ways to wear it again.

Even the prettiest things stop being enjoyable at some point.

The heart of him, or the lack thereof, really saw no apparent value in this man. Who could blame Tyler for being so heartless? When he had watched so many men, every bit as disposable as the last, swoop in and out of his mother’s life, he learned a valuable lesson from her. Love is as valuable as the things it gives you, and you can't buy Swarovski with things like happiness. Love, like everything else to Tyler, was simply material. And Fandango, like everyone else, was a jacket he could return for a refund after its appeal faded. 

Everyone sees the world differently. Tyler’s world is seen through the things he likes and measured in things he knows. Tyler likes simple things. He likes rose petals in his bath, hydrating moisturizers with flakes of gold, blinding highlight on his sharp cheekbones, and cologne strong enough to mask the cigarette smoke that lingers on his skin.

He wonders sometimes what sort of things Fandango uses to measure his world. Maybe he counts time in the hours spent icing his feet after a particularly brutal routine, or the sheer number of rhinestones that adorn his pants, or the women with glowing skin and petite figures that he dances with like he’s been doing it forever. 

Tyler wonders why he’s wondering at all, and he knows something isn't right. 

He sees Fandango practicing backstage with some brunette. Her hair is flat, and her shoes are gaudy, but she isn't completely unfortunate looking. Her hand rests on his chest, and he’s smirking. Drinking down attention from her like a man who just found water after spending a week in the desert.

That's a stark difference he notices. Tyler likes attention, duh. He doesn't work so hard on his look so everyone can ignore him, but he doesn't thrive off of other people’s attention first. His own opinion of himself matters a thousand times more. Fandango lets these women invade a personal bubble that nobody is allowed to invade with Tyler, and he peacocks the way he did when he turned on Goldust for him. It's enough to send him into a famous Tyler Breeze hissy fit. So common, it ought to be trademarked. 

He can do a lot of things. He is exceptional at everything. He can preen for a camera like nobody else can with an array of emotions that he fakes better than anyone in the industry. He is fluent in seven languages, and practicing two more in his free time. He isn't just in fashion, he _is_ fashion and everything he wears becomes fashion with him. He’s the reason that fur made a comeback after years of wasting away in the recesses of closets across the world. Now what of him? He’s staring at himself in the streaky mirror in the locker room. He notices his ponytail is crooked and there's bumps where his hair wasn't pulled flat on the top of his head. He stares too hard. He thinks he sees crows feet coming in on the corner of his eyes. He feels like he could cry.

But he doesn't. Tyler Breeze does not cry over such pathetic matters.

He thinks about Swarovski, about his runway show in Milan next week and about how cathartic it will be to see his gorgeous face in magazines and hear the way those makeup artists swoon over how perfect he is. He thinks about love. He does not want to be thinking about love right now, not after that display in the hallway. Fingers brush through his blue fur vest. He knows Fandango is wearing a matching one and he rips it off, throwing it into the locker room, hearing it smack against the bench. For the life of him, he cannot understand why he feels so miserable.

——

Did he seriously have to put up with incompetence to such a disgusting degree? Whoever was hiring these dancers to go pace for pace with him was going to need to be fired ASAP. This little mousy thing who was so starry-eyed kept stepping on his toes. Pathetic. 

Fandango was less of a narcissist and more of a perfectionist. He figured that, perhaps, they could be interchangeable sometimes. If you strive for perfection in everything you do, including in yourself, that would technically fit you in the narcissistic category anyway. Definitions were never his strong suit. Mostly because he just didn't care. 

He supposed he couldn't really be surprised by the sheer lack of talent the company threw at his feet and called acceptable. Acceptable was not perfect. This company just settled on the mediocre for him, but that was not news for him anymore. Fandango does not settle for tolerable. He was a glass half empty sort of man, and he was being paired with half empty glasses when he deserved them to be full. And talented. 

When he was 12, he broke his ankle in rehearsals after a nasty stumble that sent him careening into the bars. The only thing that hurt was his pride, even if no one was around to see it. Being kept out of dance for as long as he had only motivated him to push a little harder to make up for anything that anyone thought he might have lost. If anyone thought that Fandango ever lost his edge, they would have been sorely mistaken. 

The world is in slow motion to him when he dances, like there's nothing around him and it's a confined moment in time where he can experience the peace with his partner. Assuming, that is, that they're remotely capable of keeping up with him. He suffers in silence because he knows he’s doing well. If his partner can't keep up, then that's their problem. It was hard to match human perfection pace for pace.

You had to first believe that you were just as perfect, and nobody he had been unfortunately saddled with had thought that way. Except Summer, who had a strong capacity for confidence, because she didn't have room in her pretty head for much else.

Fandango’s idea of loyalty is fickle. Just looking at his track record, his dance partners were kindling for the bonfire that was him. Passed back and forth and dumped again. It didn’t stop people from chomping at the bit to get to dance with a professional before they sunk back to their mediocre lives. Tag teams, dance partners. Nobody stays long for any reason. 

It’s not a complaint, considering he was the instigator of every single turn he could think of. It was easier to keep everyone as close as he could get them. It made the turn hurt them even more every single time. It just made Fandango smile.

Tyler’s an odd sort of partner. He is not a man who needs anything added to his ego. Everything Fandango knows how to do to rope in someone gullible will not work because Tyler does it all for himself anyway. That does piss him off.

It intrigues him too. There’s no discernable weakness with Tyler to target like there was with Summer or Goldust, so he’s already at a loss for the eventual turn.

Of course Fandango scouts him. It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen. This man who screams about his appearance in a fight still so unafraid to attack with this look in his eye that is nearly primal. He kicks harder than anyone Fandango’s ever faced. His shrill voice carries across the entire arena when the ref dares put his hands on him. The man has a style that Fandango cannot keep up with.

Fandango isn’t an idiot — he just plays one better than people think. The ditz gets things done. People assume the least out of people who seem completely dopey. Fandango gathers information in the guise of a brainless ballroom dancer on anyone he allies himself with. Just when they’re confident they have him completely whipped, he strikes hard and bloody.

Brawn was one valuable skill to have in this business. Fandango had survival instincts and cunning. That was better than any feat of strength in the book.

Tyler’s going to slip up one day. He’ll overshare something, he’ll ramble, he’ll mutter something in his sleep. And Fandango’s going to be right there, with it tucked safely in his brain. When Tyler least expects it, he’ll drop the Last Dance right onto his throat and watch him choke. He never misses the chance at the last laugh.

He turned on Goldust for Breeze for two reasons. One: because Goldust is a pathetic, old, freak show who really thought he was worthy of being within a few feet of him. Two: because there’s something more fun about really getting into Tyler’s head. So when he sends Goldust to the mat with the clothesline, he preens for Tyler.

Sends him a silent message. “I’m on your side,” he says by saying nothing at all. “I’m with you, for now.”

Fandango hears from his father for the first time in weeks the night he turns on Goldust, and he chews him up for doing that again. He has always been able to hear past that venom and listen to what his father’s really saying. His father says he’s absolutely stunned he would take a legend out of commission for some blonde. 

In the back of the call, he hears his mother giggle. She always knew her son better.

Tyler’s experienced, at least as a singles competitor, but Fandango dominated when it came to tag work, at least until the charm wore off. Now it was just a test to see if Tyler could keep up. Fandango doubted he could match anything he could do, but he wasn't green by any stretch of the imagination.

He sees Tyler backstage one night, while Fandango warms up with his white bread amateur, and dancing through the pain of getting his toes stepped on. He doesn't see him long, because he turns to put on his vest and when he turns back, he’s gone again. The locker room door slams, like an alarm in Fandango’s brain.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he leans down to the dancer, who bats her lashes and tries to give him puppy dog eyes. It looks pathetic. “Why don't you take fifteen? Maybe you’ll actually know how to dance when I get back.”

From the recesses of her throat comes a choked gasp. She spins indignant on her heel and stomps off. His eyes follow her until she’s out of sight. He hears the crashing sound of a travel case hitting the floor. He laughs.

——

How pathetic could he get? Tyler has been prodding his skin for five minutes. He wishes he had his bag on hand so he could exfoliate. Even if he exfoliated yesterday, and he can't possibly risk micro-tears in his skin, but he feels like he needs some sort of therapy.

The silver phone wrapped in its baby blue fur case sits idly beside him on the counter. It hasn't made a sound in an hour. Nobody even wants to talk to him. Tyler is outraged that his phone isn't screaming at him with notifications of concern messages over the tantrum that nobody knows he’s having.

“God, could this get worse?” And if he hadn't been confident this was a full-blown diva tantrum, he stomps his foot and pouts.

“You're getting frown lines, Breezy.” Tyler’s head snaps around to the door. The answer to his question was clearer than ever. “It ages you.”

“Oh, my God. Did you come in here to pick apart my surface flaws?” Tyler just admitting he had any surface flaws to point out left a bitter taste in his mouth. “Of which I have few, thank you very much.”

“Not at all.” Fandango curls his fingers into the lapels of the blue fur vest, leans back against the wall and crosses his ankles. This smug grin cracks into place on his mouth. “But a few? I think you're being pretty generous.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” He hisses at him. His eyes are narrowed and sharp. Tyler takes a step out of the bathroom and stares him down, moving closer to him to get near his face. Fandango’s only a couple inches taller than him. Tyler doesn't like being looked down on.

“You're looking a little rough around the edges, Breezy. And your T-zone is dry.” Fandango traces a T in the air as he speaks, like Tyler honestly needs a guide to know where his T-zone is.

Still, Tyler touches his nose, brushes his thumb up to his forehead, and he wants to knock this guy on his ass for being right. “Shut up! You're one to talk. Your spray tan looks like shit.”

Fandango looks down at his arm, tan as the day he was born. If it did look bad, which it never did, he wasn't seeing it. “It just looks like me.”

“It makes you look like an oompa-loompa, but that's fitting for you.” Tyler, against better judgement, picks a cuticle. It's too deep, it rips and he can feel the sting as his nail bed starts to bleed. Fandango can't suppress a chuckle. “Shut up.”

“I didn't say anything.” They're both just looking, but Fandango feels like a million bucks, and Tyler wishes the floor would open him up and pull him down. This isn't pleasant. “You're bleeding, man. You plan on cleaning that up?”

If there was any more blood on his finger, he’d flourish his wrist and send it spattering on Fandango’s gear. A stain, just like him. “Whatever. What do you want?”

“A guy can't stop in and say hi to his tag partner?”

“A guy can. You can't. You're not just a regular guy.”

As if it's a cue, Fandango tilts his head, disgusting smugness still in tact on his face. “Then what am I?”

“You're a pain in the ass, that's what. And you, unlike normal guys, don't respect people enough to just want to say hi.” Tyler wipes his finger on the side of his gear, blowing on the nail bed.

Another chuckle. If he did it again, Tyler would flip. There was cocky because it made sense to be cocky, like Tyler was, and then there was cocky just to be a dick, like Fandango.

“Busted. I just saw you storm off, and I came to check on you. The fact that you're pouting, bloody and dry-skinned is just a bonus.”

There's silence between them. Faint hum of a vent in the distance is the only sound in the room. Both of them have a lot to say but they both choose to say nothing instead.

“And yet, I still look miles better than you, Fandango.” The butchery of Fandango’s name makes Tyler smile. He sees him wince at the mispronunciation. It's a nerve that he made too obvious, and Tyler’s being smart about when to strike it.

“You need to let the A’s breathe, Breeze. Don't be lazy about it.” He tries to shrug it off, but he is incredibly annoyed with Tyler over his attempt to strike where he shouldn't. “Although, considering how much you're slacking with your wardrobe, skin routine and hair, I shouldn't expect anything more than laziness from you.”

Tyler slaps him across the face.

It feels good. There was a brief debate while his hand flared out as to whether to close his hand and punch him in the mouth, but he spares him at the last second. There's a slight paleness to the spot on Fandango’s cheek. It looks good. Tyler wants to crack his jaw, but he knows he’ll get in a lot of shit if he puts him in the hospital.

Fandango, for all of his flaws, is faster than Tyler expected. He grabs Tyler’s wrist and bends it, pulling his arm behind his back and shoves him against the door face-first. Tyler uses his heel to boot Fandango’s shin over and over until he can get him to back away. 

Fandango takes him down at the waist, knee against the back of Tyler’s head, pressing his face into the floor and twisting. There's little breathing room when Tyler shoves hard and knocks Fandango onto his back.

The model’s seeing red, and he pins Fandango to the floor, drives his knee into his face once, twice, three times, until there’s blood on his navy gear. Fandango spits blood onto Tyler’s pale chest and pushes him back. He wipes his mouth on the inside of the fur vest and whips it off, hearing it smack against the brick wall.

He’s kneeling beside Tyler and Tyler blocks the elbows he tries to drill into his cheek, but he misses the one Fandango sends into his gut and Tyler doubles over, shouting a winded curse. Fandango screams at him, now on his feet, with a fistful of Tyler’s hair, dragging him up too. They’re too close and Fandango’s nose is dripping blood onto Tyler’s mouth and Tyler grimaces when he feels it but Fandango can only laugh.

Tyler, in a quick move, grabs Fandango’s head and uses it for balance, ramming his knee into his gut. He groans at the feeling and pushes Tyler back into the benches.

“How’s that taste, Breezy, huh?” Fandango has a look in his eye, primal and deadly, but Tyler only matches it. Fandango spits blood again, into Tyler’s light blonde hair. Tyler barely reacts to it before he’s taking Fandango down again, punch after punch after punch to his smug face.

He doesn't register that he’s not hitting him anymore until he’s being dragged off of Fandango by multiple people. In his conscious mind, he can hear voices. Summer’s there, pulling his left arm, and Layla on the other. He allows them to pull him out of the locker room and shoves them off once he’s in the hall and Fandango’s laying inside. Summer goes to check on him, while Layla scrambles to get paper towels to clean Tyler’s face up.

Fandango sees the blur of Summer come into focus, the harsh light building a halo around her head. He knows he isn't dead, but he doesn't feel good physically. And at the same time, he feels great emotionally, because he found that weak spot that could make Tyler crack. Summer and Layla got mad with him before, but Tyler went and attacked him.

She's got his head in her lap, and she doesn't seem to care that he’s definitely dribbling blood on her leg. She doesn't sound pleased, but he doesn't care. He wanted to make Tyler crack, and he did, and it feels damn good.

——

The tag division is staggering, pathetic and weak. The company needs a team that at least looks like they have their shit together. It's a model’s world, and Tyler can fake happy as much as he needs to with Fandango.

They're in a match the next week, after getting sent home for their little stunt in the locker room. They win, of course they do, and Fandango puts his hand on Tyler’s waist, the other coolly on his face, and there's screams from the crowd. Tyler wants his hands off of him. They're not allowed to go out there and fight each other, so they pretend like they actually get along just so the crowd has something to eat up.

“Your furs are itchy.” Fandango comments, pulling off the magenta and neon green vest the minute they're backstage. He drapes it over his forearm, running his fingers down the length of it. “How do you live in these things?”

“Will you give me that?” Tyler snaps at him, pulling the furs from his arm. “That was custom made, with imported furs. And don’t even get me _started_ on the dyeing process.”

Fandango cannot help the snort he makes over Tyler’s insistence on respecting the jacket. He notices that Tyler respects the fine art of fur vests more than the sacred bond of tag teams. For a second, he sees something similar in Tyler over their concept of loyalty.

Or perhaps Fandango just had the beatdown coming in the locker room. Either one.

Tyler feels Fandango’s fingers on his face from earlier and he wants a deep cleanse ASAP. He cannot believe that he genuinely allowed his brain to go anywhere near the idea of actually liking this guy, when he is so insistent on being the absolute worst that he can be.

They’re supposed to be friends. They play the game well because they know how to. They could honestly teach a class on how to fake enjoying yourself around someone who pushes every last one of your buttons. 

Tyler is a man that does not give second chances, but when he’s stuck with the guy for the next few months, he knows he’ll just get worse if he doesn’t. Through gritted teeth, Tyler bargains with himself to restrain his sheer need to hold a grudge. 

“Look, Fandango,” Tyler doesn’t botch his name, but Fandango’s picky, and he sighs heavily after he says it anyway. “Last week, you were a bastard, and don’t forget it. What I did, you had coming.”

Fandango snorts again. Neither of them really know what it means to hold themselves accountable for anything. They make uncomfortable eye contact with each other as they walk into the locker room. Tyler sets his vest and Fandango’s on top of each other. He opts not to tell Fandango that he actually bothered to get his vest custom made to fit him properly.

“So what? You’re going to apologize for busting my nose open?”

“I am trying to, but you make it very difficult to be sincere.” Tyler sits beside his jackets, setting his fingers on them and running them down the fur. “We are… a team now. So I don’t think it’s going to do much to have us picking fights all the time. Even if you have an incredibly punchable face.”

“I could say the very same thing about you.” His mouth curls into a smile, but it seems less smug and more playful. In his brain, he is making notes. Tyler is willing to make amends, at least for the sake of working as a team. Fandango wonders just how long that peace can last. Not long, if Fandango’s plans come together. 

“Will you let me finish?” Tyler snaps, fingers curling into the jacket. “I won’t punch you in the mouth again, unless you give me a reason. Can you agree to do the same?”

He hesitates for a moment. He can agree, certainly, but does he want to? Perhaps Tyler has more to give than Fandango sees at first. Tag champion has a nice ring to it too. “I agree. On one condition.” The blond’s eyebrows go up. He looks exhausted. “You pronounce my name right.”

“Are you kidding me?” The look on Fandango’s face tells him that he is not kidding, and that he is going to enjoy hearing this. “No. I won’t break your face open again, that’s my bargain.”

Fandango sighs, looking up at Tyler with resignation. He wanted what he suggested, but he can tell that Tyler is entirely serious that he’ll strike again if Fandango refuses to agree and he isn’t looking to spend an hour in the bathroom trying to keep his blood in his head again. “Good enough.”

Respect between them is still shaky — they both can see that. Tyler makes the first move and puts out a hand, pulling up the aqua wristband higher on his forearm. Fandango sticks his hand out and shakes it in return. They’re staring at each other, not breaking eye contact, out of sheer need to prove that one cannot break the other.

Tyler thinks about the Beauty Shot, carried with such speed and finesse that it dazzles every time he lands it. He thinks about his heels meeting Fandango’s jaw, about him laid out on the ground. Tyler squeezes the hand of Fandango in his own a little more than he should. It’s a warning.

Fandango thinks about the Last Dance. About being perched high on the top rope, hearing the roar of the crowd as he showboats to them. Tyler would be prone on the mat below him, and how satisfying the sound will be when his leg connects to Tyler’s neck. Fandango simply returns the favour, curling short nails into Tyler’s skin. 

They both say nothing. They don’t have to. They both know what they have to do unto others what they wish they could do to each other. 

And for the first time, they’re smiling together.


End file.
